The part about voluntarily giving up confessions reminds me of something similar during the Vietnam war. People would be grouped together and would need to "confess" the allures of capitalism. You could only graduate from the program once you procured enough drama to guarantee you were a comrade.

The Viet Cong learned from the one true master - these torture/coercion methods are copied from Mao's "struggle sessions" where any successful farmers/craftsmen and university graduates were publicly tortured in front of the proletariat until they admitted to any and all crimes (and in a few million cases they were killed anyway, pour encourager les autres).